07 February 2012 11:47 PM

The compelling case against Ed Davey

True to my warning yesterday in the Daily Mail, the new Energy and Climate Change Secretary Ed Davey has dashed the naive hope that he would end the Coalition’s suicidal green fanaticism and return Britain to Planet Reality over man-made global warming. As the Times (£) reported today, he used his first few hours in his new job to tell the 100+ Tory MPs who are in revolt over wind farms effectively to take a running jump. Insisting he was a ‘lifelong supporter’ of wind power, he argued that the case for it was ‘compelling’ and that Britain’s energy production must be ‘clean and green’.

How unfortunate, then, that on the very same day news comes from Germany -- the historical shrine, indeed the fons et origo, of deep ecology -- that one of Germany’s high priests of the religion of greenery has recanted, and that renewable energy has catastrophically failed (hat tip: Anthony Watts).

As the Global Warming Policy Foundation reports a new book, Die Kalte Sonne, written by Prof Dr Fritz Vahrenholt and geologist/paleontologist Dr. Sebastian Lüning, has caused a sensation even in advance of its official publication yesterday. For Prof. Vahrenholt, a renewable energy expert, was one of the fathers of the modern German green movement and believed everything preached by the IPCC. But according to Focus magazine, he is now a far sadder and wiser man:

‘Doubt came two years ago when he was an expert reviewer of an IPCC report on renewable energy. “I discovered numerous errors and asked myself if the other IPCC reports on climate were similarly sloppy.”

‘In his book he explains how he dug into the IPCC climate report and was horrified by what he had found. Then add the 10 years of stagnant temperatures, failed predictions, Climategate e-mails, and discussions he had with dozens of other skeptical elite scientists. That was more than enough. FOCUS quotes: “I couldn’t take it any more. I had to write this book.”’

Now he discovers this inconvenient truth? What took him so long?

Meanwhile another report exposes the chaos that has been unleashed upon Germany’s energy supplies by the failure of its alternative energy policy based on wind and solar power. Apparently, Germany

‘...hopes to supply at least 80% of its energy needs through renewable energies by 2050, and thus become a moral leader on environmental responsibility for the rest of the world.’

Sound familiar? But alas:

‘The problem is that these energy sources are weather-dependent and thus their sporadic supply is starting to wreak havoc on Germany’s power grid and is even now threatening to destabilize power grids all across Europe. The other problem: the power grid needed to distribute the decentrally produced green power is simply not there yet. They forgot to build it! So far, after tens of billions of euros spent on renewable energy systems and higher prices for consumers, not a single coal or gas-fired power plant has been taken offline. To the contrary, old inefficient plants have been brought back into service in an effort to stabilize the grid.

‘To make matters worse, in a fit of panic and hysteria, the German government shut down 8 of its older 18 nuclear reactors in the wake of the Fukushima disaster, thus removing a very cheap and stable supply of power and further pushing the grid to the limits. Before the shutdown of the nuclear reactors, Germany had been a net power exporter; today it is a net power importer and is at times severely straining neighboring power grids. To compensate for the missing nuclear power, the government is now heavily promoting even more weather-dependent wind power, which is further destabilizing the German and European power grids. A solution to the problem of storing electricity is still at least a generation away.

‘The question of course is how could such absurd decisions have been made to begin with? Were there no experts involved in the planning of the new power generation infrastructure? The answer obviously is no. Power executives are viewed as evil, dirty and greedy polluters, and thus were never really consulted. They could not be counted on to give the politically correct solutions. Therefore the decision to shut down the German nuclear power plants and to massively support renewables was done unilaterally by the government, without consulting the power executives or even neighboring countries.’

The question at the start of this last paragraph remains of course unanswered. How could so many apparently sane and sensible people have departed so comprehensively from reason over the anthropogenic global warming scam and to have placed such blind faith in renewable energy sources? Several immediate reasons come to mind – indeed, I have enumerated them on many occasions – such as the brainwashing grip of environmental ideology, the western retreat from reason and truth, the manipulation of grant-funding, the intimidation of rigorous scientists, and the fact that so many, including some other scientists, have sloppily endorsed AGW theory without bothering to look at how the IPCC actually reached its bogus conclusions.

But the deeper question still remains. What is it in the psyche of the western mind that has caused so many people not only to be seduced by a set of obvious myths and fallacies over AGW theory but to be utterly resistant to every scrap of evidence over the past 25 years that showed they were totally out to lunch—the true ‘compelling case’ now demonstrated once again by Britain’s new Energy and Climate Change Secretary?

Comments

Melanie Phillips, James Delingpole and Christopher Booker are three very brave and honest writers who have earned the right to call themselves journalists by their unwillingness to meekly accept the bullish dominant narrative surrounding anthropogenic global warming (or whatever it's being called this week). We need more articulate and intellectually courageous writers and broadcasters like them to take issue with the discredited 'settled science' of so-called 'man-made climate change'.

"over man-made global warming." - Isn't it global cooling now? One's getting confused. I wonder if we can sue somebody for driving us crazy. The day before yesterday it was cooling, yesterday warming, today everybody's freezing and people dying - supposedly of cold - but is it still of warmth? And what about tomorrow?

As a Canadian I am horrified with the European obsession with AGW. Barbara Tuchman wrote a book several years ago called the March of Folly. This couldn't describe better the lemming like leap over the green cliff. Thank goodness our PM has not drunk the green Koo-Aid

The climate change pressure groups are powerful and influential. They trade on the foolish guilt the developed world has been saddled with by generations of technology despising artists and intellectuals. To break the power of this righteous elite will take more than the downfall of one ministerial zealot.

We can , of course, expect the usual flood of eco-fanatics adding comments to this post with the same old assertions (DM readers can't tell weather from climate, the journalists are in the pay of 'Big Oil' etc).

It should be obvious that a 'denier' is someone who refuses to consider evidence which challenges their firmly held prejudices. Sceptics have looked at the evidence for AGW and found it to be unconvincing and even dishonest. The AGW advocates on the other hand often most often resort to discrediting their critics rather than trying to refute their arguments. They are the ones who are in denial.

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